A study on the use of framing devices in some vietnamese and american front pages

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN LINH CHI

A STUDY ON THE USE OF FRAMING DEVICES
IN SOME VIETNAMESE AND AMERICAN FRONT PAGES
(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁCH SỬ DỤNG CÁC YẾU TỐ TẠO BỐ CỤC
TRÊN MỘT SỐ MẶT BÁO VIỆT – MỸ)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field:

English Linguistics

Code:

8220201.01

HANOI, 2018


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN LINH CHI

A STUDY ON THE USE OF FRAMING DEVICES

IN SOME VIETNAMESE AND AMERICAN FRONT PAGES
(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁCH SỬ DỤNG CÁC YẾU TỐ TẠO BỐ CỤC
TRÊN MỘT SỐ MẶT BÁO VIỆT – MỸ)
M.A MINOR THESIS

Field:

English Linguistics

Code:

8220201.01

Supervisor: Prof. Nguyễn Hoà, PhD

HANOI, 2018


DECLARATION
I, Nguyen Linh Chi, hereby certify that all material in my thesis, which is not, my
own work has been identified and acknowledge. The result of my research is the
fulfillment of the requirement for Degree of Master of Arts at the Faculty of Post
Graduate Studies – University of Languages and International Studies, Hanoi. I
commit that this M.A thesis has not been submitted anywhere for any degree.
Nguyen Linh Chi

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Nguyen
Hoa, for his invaluable assistance, guidance and encouragement during the time I
have tried to complete this thesis. He consistently allowed this study to be my own
work, but steered me in the right direction whenever he thought I needed it.
I would also like to express my sincere thanks to all lecturers of Department of Post
Graduate Studies at University of Languages and International Studies, Hanoi.
Without their passionate and helpful lectures, my study could not have been
successfully conducted.
I am in debt of many authors‟ works that help me to improve the quality of my
research.
Last but not least, I must express my profound appreciation to my family for
providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement.

ii


ABSTRACT
This Master‟s Thesis is based on the combination of Fairclough‟s concept of
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Kress and van Leeuwen‟s Social Semiotic
Analysis (SSA). CDA has become a separate field within applied linguistics and is
continuously modified to new phenomena, one of which is multimodal text. The
main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the use of framing devices, integrating
the CDA framework by Fairclough (1989) as well as to prove that multimodal
analysis is now taking a prominent place in news media analysis.
This thesis aims to work out the definition and framework of framing, apply
the framework for the analysis of some Vietnamese and American newspaper front
pages and to analyze the journalists‟ choices in the use of verbal and visual devices
on the discourse level. The methodology used in this research includes critical
review of the existing literature on CDA and SSA, introduction of framing devices,
and application of the theoretical guidelines to study a collection of data. The data

consists of some Vietnamese and American newspaper front pages. The findings
obtained in this thesis confirm the position of multidimensional analysis in news
discourse analysis, and sketch out the composition of power and ideological
relations on the discourse level.

iii


LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CDA

Critical Discourse Analysis

SSA

Social Semiotic Analysis

SFL

Systemic Functional Linguistics

iv


LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Tables
Table 1

35

Table 2

57

Figures
Figure 1

8

Figure 2

13

Figure 3

24

Figure 4

26

Figure 5

48

Figure 6

49

Figure 7

51

Figure 8

54

Figure 9

56

v


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration

i

Acknowledgements

ii

Abstract

iii

List of abbreviations

iv

List of tables and figures

v

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale

1

2. Aims of the study

3

3. Scope of the study

3

4. Research questions

3

5. Methodology

4

6. Structure of the study

5

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

7

1.1. Overview of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

7

1.1.1. The notion of CDA

7

1.1.2. Fairclough‟s framework of CDA

9

1.2. Overview of Social Semiotic Analysis (SSA)

11

1.3. Framing

15

1.3.1. The notion of framing

15

1.3.2. Framing devices

19

1.3.2.1. Linguistic devices

20

1.3.2.2. Technical devices

21

1.3.3. Signifying the framework in layout
1.3.3.1. Information value

22
22


1.3.3.2. Salience

27

1.3.3.3. Technical framing devices

28

1.4. Newspaper front pages

29

1.4.1. The importance of front pages

29

1.4.2. Organizational influence on media content

30

1.5. Summary of the chapter

31

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

32

2.1. Critical Discourse Analysis framework

32

2.2. A qualitative content analysis

33

2.3. Data collection

34

2.4. Analytical framework

34

2.5. Summary of the chapter

36

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

37

3.1. Analysis in terms of linguistic devices

37

3.1.1. Structural properties of headlines

38

3.1.1.1. Types of sentences

38

3.1.1.2. Verb tense and voice

40

3.1.1.3. The use of nominalizations

41

3.1.1.4. The omission of grammatical words

41

3.1.1.5. The use of stylistic means

42

3.1.2. Discourse and lexical properties of headlines

43

3.1.2.1. The events and participants of the events

43

3.1.2.2. The use of precise data

44

3.1.2.3. Quotations

44

3.1.2.4. The use of rhetorical questions

45

3.1.2.5. The use of metaphor-based word plays

46

3.2. Analysis in terms of technical devices

47

3.2.1. Front pages of The New York Times

47

3.2.2. Front pages of Tuyen Quang

52


3.3. Summary of the chapter

57

PART C: CONCLUSION
1. Recapitulation of the study

58

2. The Findings

58

3. Limitations and implications for further studies

62

REFERENCES

63

APPENDIX 1

I

APPENDIX 2

VI


PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
For a long time, there has been consistent attention paid to the monomodal
discourse of texts. In spoken communication, the facial expression and gestures are
ignored. Many serious and highly valued works appear with densely printed pages
and without much interest in visual illustration, layout and presentation. However,
the situation has now completely reversed. Multimodal discourse analysis is now
taking up their central position. The importance of paralanguage, i.e., the way in
which speakers show what they mean by non-verbal qualities of speech other than
by the words they use, is now highlighted. It can be seen in newspapers, magazines,
reports, books and many other kinds of texts that the processor has written and
designed multimodally. The idea is that different modes in any multimodal
discourses are not strictly restricted and framed specialist tasks, but they can
perform the other‟s tasks. The verbal and the visual can explain the same meaning
to fulfill and expand one another, or they can even argue and disagree. For instance,

in a movie, it is possible for music to express emotions and encode action.
Obviously, the semiotic modes may interrelate in various ways and they create a
positive effect on the listener and the reader. Seeing this trend in speech and writing
practices, it is important to cultivate a theoretical framework appropriate to
multimodal modes of discourse analysis, which can sufficiently characterize the
interaction between verbal and visual modes and analyze their precise meaning.
In the age of digitization, the dominance of monomodality has been replaced by
semiotic practice, especially in the field of mass media. While the media or news
media plays an essential role in the life of millions of citizens, it is not exaggerated
to say that the media is a cornerstone in our society regarding its considerable
influence on the way it forms public opinion by framing events and problems in
specific ways.

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The term „framing‟ is referred to “a communication source presenting and defining
an issue.” The use of frame analysis in studying news discourse has been steadily
expanded since the early 1990s, giving opportunities to investigate the media
content and the relationship between media and public opinion, i.e., the forces that
create public interpretations of reality and how they can affect audiences‟ attitudes.
The use of framing as a theory to study news frames so far originated from a
sociological approach, in which frames are considered “social constructs and
outcomes of journalistic norms or organizational constraints, as well as sponsored
by social and political actors” (Bateson, 1955). According to Goffman (1974),
frames are defined as “schemata of interpretation” that allows people to perceive
specific events and “to locate, perceive, identify and label occurrences.” He states
that this schema of interpretation is primitive because of its capability to make a
meaningless aspect of a scene meaningful. While the journalists take responsibility
for employing the framework for the coverage of events in the news media, they can

lead the audiences‟ cognition of events and information the way they want. This
situation has triggered extensive researches on the interplay between news coverage
and ones‟ interpretation of events and information and has opened up the expansion
of several theories to the notions and analysis of frames.
This study cites evidence in supporting an idea that being knowledgeable of various
types of framing is crucial to figure out how, when, and why they function properly
and effectively. It shows how news framing devices may be identified and used to
recognize cross-national dissimilarities in news. The study is based on the analytic
paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) proposed by Fairclough (1989) and
Social Semiotic Analysis (SSA) proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006).
According to Fairclough, discourse is connected with conceptualizing, researching
language, and other semiotic forms in a certain way; therefore, media discourse
should be analyzed in a multidimensional way in which texts and semiotic aspects,
as well as discourse practice and social practice cannot be separated. For this

2


reason, CDA allows us to incorporate textual analysis within social analysis of news
discourse.
2. Aims of the study
In studying a collection of Vietnamese and American newspaper front pages, the
reseacher would like to investigate how framing is applied in newspaper front
pages; find out the similarities and differences in the use of framing devices in the
selected data; and offer some implications for readers to read and understand
newspaper front pages and for journalists to write and design front-page layouts that
are attractive to readers.
3. Scope of the study
On the basis of the principal theories and approaches introduced by famous critical
discourse analysts, the writer am going to do a research on the use of framing

devices in some Vietnamese and American newspaper front pages. The theories of
the study is based on the analytic paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
proposed by Fairclough (1989) and Social Semiotic Analysis (SSA) proposed by
Kress and van Leeuwen (2006). The rational for choosing newspaper front pages is
that they are great choice as an instrument of analysis because they are capable of
mutually exchange complex ideas. Kress and van Leeuwen assert that newspapers
“are the first point of „address‟ for the readers” demonstrating the most highlighted
events and issues of the day for the paper and its readers. The Vietnamese front
pages are extracted from Tuyen Quang while the American ones are taken from the
New York Times.
4. Research questions
In examining the use of framing devices in some Vietnamese and American front
pages, the researcher would like to figure out how the front pages are designed and
the relationship between the visual mode of representation and communication, and
whether cultural and social origin is involved.

3


The study aims at answering the following questions:
1. What kinds of devices are often used to frame news in Vietnamese and American
newspaper front pages?
2. How do the framing devices construct the ways the reader capture a news story?
3. What are the similarities and differences in the ways framing devices are used in
Vietnamese and American newspaper front pages?
5. Methodology
There are a variety of fields of inquiry within CDA, hence the aim of the study is to
give a comprehensive description, explanation and critique of the strategies
journalists use to make media discourses, in this case, newspaper front pages,
appear common-sense and apolitical. CDA provides a cluster of approaches to

discover the relationship between language, society, power, ideology, values and
opinion; therefore it is significant in the field of language and communication. In
CDA, ideologies result from differences in position, experience and interests among
social groups, which then lead to ideological conflict in terms of power. The
ideological meaning systems are introduced and usually operated in the social
institutional discourses. Fairclough (2003: 24), believing that language is „an
irreducible part of social life‟, states, “the dialectic relation between language and
social reality is realized through social events (texts), social practices (orders of
discourse) and social structures (languages).” His model offers an explanation of a
cognitive process on how people share and explain meanings in texts within several
different social contexts. Texts cause the effects upon and are partly responsible for
changes in people, actions, social relations and the material world. Fairclough
makes an effort to discover ideological and power patterns in texts. Therefore, CDA
appears as the principal framework for this study.
Different scholars make use of different methodological strategies to analysis in
general and frame analysis in particular. In analyzing framing, while some
researchers use quantitative analysis, others favor qualitative approach or in other
4


words, a text-based interpretative. Applying framing as a methodological approach
demands for the construction and process features of a discourse or a discourse
itself. Moreover, framing strategy links the striving trend of social analysis toward
ending debates and making things public, hence that may be considered one of its
advantages. Framing approach accomplishes the following aims within the context
of media study: to identify issues, to make proper assessments, and to propose
solutions. According to Wimmer and Dominick (2006: 152-153), framing strategy
as a scheme of qualitative analysis should be carried out to achieve the following
media researches objectives:
 giving a detailed account of the communication content;

 describing the resemblances between media content and the real world; and
 raising a starting points for researches on media effects.
Pan and Kosicki (1993: 58) point out the four distinctions that make news framing
analysis diferent from other strategies to news. Framing perceives news texts as a
composition of organized symbolic emblems that connect individual agents‟
memory and meaning explanation rather than just as a psychological stimuli bearing
identifiable meanings. Frame analysis agree on the power of rule-governed nature
of text composition and the multimodality of news texts that will facilitate the
cognition in news construction and consumption. Moreover, the validity of framing
holds the systematic procedures of collecting data of news in order to recognize the
symbolic components which may be used by the audience. Finally, in framing
analysis, the existing of frames in news texts is connected to its readers.
6. Structure of the study
The study contains of three main parts that are arranged as follows:
Part A: Introduction includes the rationale, aims, scope, research questions,
methodology and design of the study
Part B: Development consists of three chapters

5


Chapter 1: Literature review provides a brief review of CDA history and
development, Fairclough‟s framework, an overview of SSA and other background
knowledge related to the study.
Chapter 2: Methodology presents the empirical data and provides analytical
framework of the study.
Chapter 3: Findings and discussion describes the process of analyzing data and
enters into discussions.
Part C: Conclusion gives a statement on the findings in the analysis procedure and
provides significance and implications of the study for further researches.

6


PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
The chapter is devoted to a detailed description of the CDA framework, with an
emphasis on Norman Fairclough‟s CDA model, a theoretical background of SSA, a
short description of „framing‟ and other related issues.
1.1. Overview of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
1.1.1. The notion of CDA
The word „discourse‟, originated from Latin, which denotes „conversation‟,
„speech‟, is used by various linguists for the analysis of linguistic phenomena that
range over a unit of text. According to Ruth Wodak (1989), discourse is defined as
“a cluster of context-dependent practices that are: situated within specific fields of
social action; socially constituted and socially constitutive, related to a macro-topic;
link to the argumentation about validity claims such as truth and normative validity,
involving several social factors who have different points of view.” Discourse is
definitely arranged with various meanings, conveying the speaker‟s ideologies,
belief and ideas. Due to the complication of the discourse regarding both its surface
structure and meaning, discourse is said to be multidimensional structure. To
understand it completely, discourse should not only be examined on lexis,
grammatical features but also on different modes. The examination of discourse
must be the combination of discourse analysis and discourse theory. The concept of
discourse analysis has been widely used since the connection between language and
context was noticed in the field of pragmatics with concentration on interlocutors‟
socio-linguistic competence, sentences and components of sentences. It needs to
handle at least three factors including a language, a practice and a context working
together in the triangle as follows.

7


Language

Discourse
analysis

Practice

Context

Figure 1. The triangle of discourse analysis: language, practice and context
(Wodak 1989)
The first factor, language, concerns with oral or written text of the formal models,
conventions and resources in the full sense while the second one, practice, involves
in particular ways of appropriating and using language and any event that may
occur among the participants during their interaction. The last factor, context, deals
with the circumstance, the setting or information available for participants to
contextualize the text.
In late 1970s, linguists completely focused on analyzing technical figures of
language such as language variation, language change and the structures of
communicative interaction and overlooked the problems of social hierarchy and
power. The beginning of pragmatics gave support to examining the interdependence
of language and some aspects of social contexts. However, the effort was still
limited as in the field of pragmatics, sentences and elements of sentences were
considered the elementary units and it concerned with utterances alone rather than
with the real comprehensive discourse. Consequently, the analytical instruments are
8

made to review discrete elements of language rather than analyze them in a cultural,
political and social context. Thanks to the evolution of Critical Linguistics (CL)
ascribed to the work of Roger and his colleagues, the situation was significantly
changed. CL concerns with getting the meaning in texts as the comprehension of
social processes, giving texts the ideological and political functions in connection
with their contexts. Its hypotheses, foundations and procedures are supported by
many different theorists such as Kress and Hodge (1979), Fowler at al. (1979), van
Dijk (1985) and Wodak (1989).
1.1.2. Fairclough’s framework of CDA
During the merger of CL with social semiotics and pragmatics in the 1980s, Critical
Discourse Analysis, a cross-disciplinary access to the study of discourse, has been
cultivated to offer the opportunity to adopt social perspective, critical thinking, and
many other essential factors into the investigation aimed at addressing social issues.
The term CDA begins to be known in the 1980s after Norman Fairclough published
his book Language and Power regarding “language as a form of social practice”
and concentrating on how social and political influence was reproduced by the
means of language. His definition of CDA which is widely agreed and used among
CDA practitioners can be quoted as follows: “Discourse analysis which aims to
systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination
between (a) discursive practices, events and tests, and (b) wider social and cultural
structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events and
texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles
over power; and to explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse
and society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony” (Fairclough, 1995:
132).
The theorist accelerates the introduction of the critical study of discourse by
displaying fundamental theory of CDA including its aims, objectives and model
building on the theory of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFL) by M.A.K Halliday.
9

SFL is an approach to linguistics that has major influence on linguistics and serves
as fundamental authority for pragmatics and CDA. Moreover, SFL deals with
language in its social context, as an agent of social interaction, and investigates the
ways speakers and hearers use language for communication. From this perspective,
language is seen as a social interaction rather than a formal set of rules. Basing on
this model, Fairclough (1989) stresses the authority behind discourse rather than
just the authority in discourse and how individuals with power form the order of
discourse and the social order in general and control what takes place in particular
situations. CDA builds people‟s awareness of the ways language involves in the
control of some people by others. Accordingly, the author focuses heavily on
contextual knowledge and the combination of CDA and explanation how it figures
within and contributes to the existing social reality.
One of the greatest successes in Fairclough‟s contribution to CDA is the practical
framework in which he analyzes three stages namely description, interpretation and
explanation matching to the three dimensions of discourse including text,
interaction and context respectively. The first stage – description regards the formal
properties of the text while the interpretation deals with the connection between
text and interaction regarding the text as the outcome of a process of production,
and as a supply in the process of interpretation. The first stage involves the means
for the genuine representation of textual factors so it is the basis for making
interpretation possible by combining textual factors and the member‟s resource,
such as phonology, grammar, vocabulary, background knowledge, etc. Accordingly,
interpretation can be seen as a stage in which the clues make factors of the
member‟s resource work. Fairclough (2001: 117) states that interpretation has its
attention to the “discourse processes and their independence in background
assumptions.” The last stage – explanation works on the connection between social
interpretation of the outcome of the processes of production, social context and their
social influences, as Fairclough calls it “the relationship of discourse to processes of

10


struggle and to power relation.” Discourse is thought to be settled by struggles for
power and the link to power results from the struggles.
Though scholars like Fairclough (1995), Wodak (1996) and van Dijk (1998) may
pursue different approaches to CDA, they all seem to share the same opinion that
CDA is a persuasive tool to examine both spoken and written language in order to
clarify “the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality, and bias and how
these sources are initiated, maintained, reproduced, and transformed within specific
social, economic, political and historical contexts” (van Dijk, 1998). Theoretically,
what Fairclough calls „constitutive‟ is a historical and social shaped action that
helps to maintain and produce the social status quo again and to transform it. As a
consequence, CDA provides the analysts with the opportunities to comprehend the
social problems, which are negotiated by prevailing ideology and power
relationship and how the dominant forces in a community shape variants of reality
that fulfill their expectation. In the field, each discourse is considered to have its
own life; therefore, CDA is chosen to be the theoretical background for this study.
1.2. Overview of Social Semiotic Analysis (SSA)
Theo van Leeuwen (1947), a well-known critical discourse theorist and analyst,
accompanied with Gunther Kress, is the co-founder of multimodality, which is a
research area interested in the meaning-making potential and use of several semiotic
resources, consisting of communicative modes such as language as well as visual
design and media. His work has brought considerable effects on the enhancement of
multimodality, social semiotics and critical discourse analysis to fields including
education, media, and culture and business studies.
Van Leeuwen defines social semiotics as “a form of enquiry” that is neither pure
nor self-contained because it is recognized when it is used to explore particular
cases and particular situations. Semiotic resource is drawn on Halliday‟s (1978)

attitude towards language as “a social semiotic resource whose meaning-making
potential is dynamic and simultaneously shapes and is shaped by the social contexts
11


in which it is employed.” Besides, van Leeuwen also emphasizes on Gibson‟s
(1979) idea of „affordances‟, which refers to a use or purpose that a thing can have
that people can notice or feel with their senses when they experience it. In other
words, the uses will become real in factual social contexts “where their use is
subject to some form of semiotic regime” (van Leeuwen, 2005: 285).
Given the idea by Hodge and Kress‟s (1988) Social Semiotics, van Leeuwen pays
attention to the connection between the agencies of meaning-makers and how
particular institutional and wider social contexts influence individuals‟ use of
semiotic resources. Based on Halliday‟s idea (1978) language is only “one of the
semiotic systems that constitute a culture” and on his description of the vital link
between text and context, van Leeuwen outlines the basis for expanding a social
semiotic theory, which could support integrative conversation in all its forms and
across several contexts. Hodge and Kress (1988) construct a theory that “texts and
contexts, agents and objects of meaning, social structures and forces and their
complex interrelationships together constitute the minimal and irreducible object of
semiotic analysis.” The work has inspired to apply the social semiotic tradition to
multimodal and critical discourse studies and initiated efforts to investigate the
function of non-verbal modes and their interplay with language in creating or
disputing social norms and stereotypes.
The social semiotician pursues and establishes institutions for the two main ways in
multimodal research:
 investigating the use and arranging the interest of meaning-maker of single
semiotic resources, and
 discussing the directions they cooperate to make a meaningful multimodal
communication.

One thing that makes van Leeuwen‟s contribution different from the others is a
great curiosity in the meaning-making possibility of material resources, for instance
color, texture and sound and their capability to take part in language and visual
works. Into semiotic resources, it is greater and easier for users to establish more
12


conventions and express their feelings or opinions. Today, his work plays an
important role in examining the relationship between modes and the media, which is
a challenging task in the field of multimodality research and semiotics.
In their book Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, Kress and van
Leeuwen (1990) present an analytical framework built on two fundamental
principles of Halliday‟s Systemic Functional Linguistics. The first tenet is that
every text at the same time notices three types of meaning, or in other words, it
displays „metafunctions‟, namely ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning.
While the ideational represents model of experience, as compositions of processes
participants and circumstances, and the logico-semantic connections, for instance
addition, temporal sequence and causality, between them, the interpersonal meaning
performs social communications, relations and values. The last meaning – textual
interlaces the two other meanings into cohesive and coherent texts. The second
principle is that the capacity to express meaning of semiotic modes could be
displayed paradigmatically, as systems of related alternatives, each of which is
recognized through a special form. Building on Arnheim‟s (1974) concepts of
„volume‟ and „vector‟, Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) introduce the two main types
of process identified in visual representations (figure 2). Narrative processes present
one or more vectorial relations among volumes, or visual entities realized as
distinct, for instance, two people standing across the stress looking at each other,
where the directions of their gazes form vectors. Conceptual processes include
entities without vectors, for instance a portrait.

Figure 2. Two main types of process in visual representations
(based on Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006 [1996]: 59)
13


Despite accepting that SFL is a useful framework for considering all modes of
representation, Kress and van Leeuwen suggest that linguists should not take it for
granted that any categories promoted for language are suitable for investigating
other modes. They clarify different semiotic resources may perform to create the
same common types of meaning, but the formal structures and fundamentals, for
instance temporal or spatial organization, through which they assemble meaning are
dissimilar. Hence, their affordances and limitations are dissimilar. By way of
illustration, language as well as images can interpret accounts of reality that bear
different truth values for peculiar communities. Halliday and Matthiessen (2004)
show that a meaning quality in SFL‟s system of „modality‟ for English grammar. To
realize modality, linguistic resources including modal verbs and modal adjuncts can
be consumed to build up degrees of certainty in the middle from two points of the
polarity values of „yes‟ and „no‟, for example degrees of certainty and uncertainty.
In semiotic modes, Kress and van Leeuwen capture modality based on the intricate
interaction of separate clues such as degrees of color saturation, color distinction,
brightness and detail. All these clues may combine together to attract viewers to
construe a visual representation as more or less realistic, conceptual, auditory or
technical. Having a great consistency with their knowledge that semiotic resources
are incommensurate, the two analysts place less emphasis on the use of the term
„grammar‟ to suggest that the visual semiotic resource neither is arranged similarly
to language nor has analogous grammatical structures. They stress the differences
between earlier semiotic approaches to visual analysis, which appears to emphasize
on the meaning potential of separate objects and visual elements, for instance a
singular or shape, that is to say what may be realized as analogous to „lexis‟ in
verbal mode, and their analytical framework, which lay focuses on the structures

constructed by essential features within a visual structure like a photo or the front
page of a newspaper.

14


1.3. Framing
1.3.1. The notion of framing
The notion of frame analysis is based on sociology, psychology and linguistics and
is also widely used in any domain where „meaning‟ matters such as politics and
media studies. In sociology, the term „framing‟ is often connected with Gregory
Bateson and of Erving Goffman‟s (1974) work of face-to-face interaction. They pay
particular attention to the communicative events occurring within a frame, which
refers to the descriptions and promises that people grasp and consume to make
sense of any circumstance, which they have to face expectedly or unexpectedly in
their everyday life. According to Goffman (1974), frames are “the principles of
organization which govern events – at least social ones – and our subjective
involvement in them.” Frames make it easier for people to “locate, perceive,
identify, and label” ordinary occurrences. Especially, in the field of media,
journalists can apply this schema to “organize strips of the everyday world, a strip
being an arbitrary slice or cut from the stream of on-going activity” (Goffman 1974:
10-11). Gamson and Modigliani (1989) have expanded the concept. They define
framing as “a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an
unfolding strip of events... The frame suggests what the controversy is about, the
essence of the issue.” Chong and Druckman (2007), Gross and D‟Ambrossio
(2004), Iyengar and Simon (1993) share the idea that frames show a prominence or
salience of various aspects of a issue. They are signified to facilitate complicated
topics by lending more weight to particular qualities and active schemas that give
support for audiences to think a in certain way. Framing is significant is media
analysis as news is a way of seeing and learning about the world, and through its

frame, individuals can become aware of themselves and others, of their culture and
society and of other nations and people. News intends to provide people with the
information that they need to know and should know; therefore, news framing may
be questionable as it is possible for journalists to mediate the issues, especially the
social ones, and govern ones‟ subjective opinions those issues. Like common
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